Solidarity with the UC San Diego Black Student Union and the March 4 Strike to Defend Public Education

With social struggle erupting repeatedly in California, it seems vital for TUPOCC -- The United People of Color Caucus of the National Lawyers Guild -- to step up our organizing of people of color with "left, radical, progressive" (you name it) political principles and commitments to become lawyers and other legal workers who truly "serve the people."

What are the distinctive qualities, sensitivities, skills, etc. that people bring to lawyering when they come from a subjugated community -- whether it be a community shaped by race, gender, sexuality, ability, age, national origin, citizenship, religion or some other salient dimension of social power and identity?

How can our identities help us become the best, most impactful and empowering social justice advocates and community-based lawyers?

How can our identities, imagined and practiced in principled ways that strike against "every possibility of oppression" and cultivate love, joy and community for all our people, help us resist becoming incorporated into the larger system that apportions social justice in for-profit "civil rights" lawyering or the "non-profit industrial complex?"

These are the questions that TUPOCC has been posing for six years now, and 2010 is the time for us to get down in ever more serious ways -- primarily by getting to know ourselves and each other better, so we can share the trust necessary for any meaningful collaboration.

Local TUPOCC gatherings from now until late June, are a must. Our proud beautiful sisters and brothers in the UC San Diego Black Student Union, who have been resisting another outburst of old-style white supremacy, are showing us that we need to get down locally and regularly.

Similarly, all our relations across (and beyond) California, who have marched, rallied and protested vibrantly today against the ancien regime and its myriad vested interests, in order to call for solidarity across the many social differences that divide the people and to demand that the state prioritize our fundamental rights to dignified labor, education, healthcare, liberty and welfare, are calling us to organize ourselves more deeply and thoroughly than ever.

In June 2010, the US Social Forum will gather gente de corazón y conciencia (people of heart and awareness) across the United States of America. We will gather in Detroit -- Motown, Motor City baby -- in order to know each other better and build principled, powerful multi-dimensional social movements for justice.

TUPOCC must be there. What say you? Digame (talk to me).